D&D General On Grognardism...

[Ancalagon]

One of the properties of old-school play is emergent narrative, which won’t happen when the DM decides all the time. The players will key into the DM’s tendencies, and those will become foregone conclusions.

I have a group I have been running games for a long while. It makes me realize 2 things

1: One of my players really should run a game. Come on now.
2: My players perhaps know me too well. Random reaction rolls could help?
(although on that second point, I also know the players too well and NPCs have completely bamboozled the party a number of times because of it ).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The point I was making is that 3e has fewer tools for players to control their engagement. While they may have empowered individual characters with their powers, the group was disempowered because there was nothing like reaction rolls to ensure that encounters weren’t necessarily fights or escape procedures to ensure that PCs can withdraw from a conflict that is going badly. It would be like if a new edition of Fate “simplified” things by removing concessions.

So that's an example of how removing codification (reaction rolls) hurts player power. I think you agree? 3E did take away some codification. So did 4E - I made the example of the stunt adjudication "rules" in 4E, which basically amount to "ask the DM, he'll decide how hard", which is a step back from 3E's codification, which attempts to pretty much lay out what you'd roll in various situations.

These three truths are a recipe for greatness or absolute disaster at the table Certainly, new school at least brought a consistent baseline. Of course, people’s view on that baseline differ.

I think one other thing to consider is, unless players had pushed for more power, and been given it, would have seen the move towards the beneficent "DM as fair and fan" model, or would we have seen a continuation of the adversarial model? A model which was explicitly argued for sometimes in older stuff - Gygax's "how to DM" book basically argues for adversarial DMing (it's a terrible, terrible book and made me lose a lot of respect for him for a long time). Of course then later you find out EGG did not practice ANY of what he preached in that book...

I mean, maybe that's the wrong question because even from the early days, games like Traveller gave a lot more codified power to PCs (not to mention superhero games) - I think maybe a better question is, if D&D hadn't gradually granted players more codified power, would it still be around meaningfully (i.e. not some game on the decline, perhaps even half-forgotten)? I'd say no. If 3E hadn't moved hard in the direction of codification, I expect it would died out among under-40s, and we'd all be speaking Russian... errr, I mean we'd all be playing stat+skill dicepool games like WoD/Shadowrun as the "mainstream" of RPGs. Maybe someone would revive D&D with new, stat+skill-based rules...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

1: One of my players really should run a game. Come on now.

One of my players who has played for 30 years and writes fiction and stuff (not published yet but he's easily as good as quite a few fantasy writers who are) DM'd, and I kind of didn't want to DM ever again, because he was so good at it. I think he's better than me. But DM'd a one-shot the bastard, and that was it! I'm still trying to convince him to do more!

 

[Ancalagon]

. After hanging out on some forums and hearing so much about 5E, I got the rulebooks and checked it out. It's well organized and laid out, but again, I didn't like it much better than 3E, seeming to be a bit much over on the munchkin side of things.

5e PCs are very sturdy... but there is a lot less munchkinism than 3e. The importance of your "build" is lessened, and because of attunement rules, you are very limited in the number of magical items you can have. Furthermore you can't buy/build them easily. Also, the concentration rules mean you can't "stack" a lot of buffing spells to transform yourself in an unstoppable magical juggernaut.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I have a group I have been running games for a long while. It makes me realize 2 things

1: One of my players really should run a game. Come on now.
2: My players perhaps know me too well. Random reaction rolls could help?
(although on that second point, I also know the players too well and NPCs have completely bamboozled the party a number of times because of it ).

Wholeheartedly agree with both of those!

 

[transmission89]

So that's an example of how removing codification (reaction rolls) hurts player power. I think you agree? 3E did take away some codification. So did 4E - I made the example of the stunt adjudication "rules" in 4E, which basically amount to "ask the DM, he'll decide how hard", which is a step back from 3E's codification, which attempts to pretty much lay out what you'd roll in various situations.


I think one other thing to consider is, unless players had pushed for more power, and been given it, would have seen the move towards the beneficent "DM as fair and fan" model, or would we have seen a continuation of the adversarial model? A model which was explicitly argued for sometimes in older stuff - Gygax's "how to DM" book basically argues for adversarial DMing (it's a terrible, terrible book and made me lose a lot of respect for him for a long time). Of course then later you find out EGG did not practice ANY of what he preached in that book...

I mean, maybe that's the wrong question because even from the early days, games like Traveller gave a lot more codified power to PCs (not to mention superhero games) - I think maybe a better question is, if D&D hadn't gradually granted players more codified power, would it still be around meaningfully (i.e. not some game on the decline, perhaps even half-forgotten)? I'd say no. If 3E hadn't moved hard in the direction of codification, I expect it would died out among under-40s, and we'd all be speaking Russian... errr, I mean we'd all be playing stat+skill dicepool games like WoD/Shadowrun as the "mainstream" of RPGs. Maybe someone would revive D&D with new, stat+skill-based rules...

I think I’m answer to your question, it (codification and player empowerment)needed to happen. These new school/old school players I think always existed, they just didn’t have something to point their fingers to and say “I want/don’t want that”.

Is that a fair reading? (I don’t necessarily know the actual sentiment as I wasn’t there for it?)

Of course, those that dislike it might argue that “we were so busy seeing if we could, we didn’t stop to think we should”

 

[Ancalagon]

Wholeheartedly agree with both of those!

One of the thing as a DM I do is keep in mind that most people don't want to risk their lives fighting an unknown foe. Sure, you can tell level 1 PCs from level 20 semi-gods. But those adventurers in your tunnels, are they level 5 or level 10? You can't tell. So negotiation is very frequently possible.

But sometimes what those reasonable things the NPCs tell the party is completely false - but the party buys it hook line and sinker because they sound so reasonable...

 

[Ancalagon]

Ah right - yes, this caused me to go over to 1 week long rests, which meant more encounters per LR and achieved a good class balance.

It's a valid solution... but the mere fact that this was needed in the first place... damn.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I should add, for transparency, that I am a huge fan of the OSR. That's my favorite era of gaming. So maybe I'm biased a bit about how it's been inundated with toxic attitudes, and people assuming negative things about me when they know I am fan of the OSR from guilt by association. Let's be honest, there is a growing rep about the OSR going around out there, and fair or not, it's there. All I can do is try to be the opposite, and show how the OSR can be welcoming and inclusive as well as a sort of counter voice to these loud toxic voices.

I think that's a correct, and unfortunate, statement.

There is a difference between appreciating OSR for what it is, while acknowledging the very-real problems with some of the actual old rulesets, as opposed to celebrating the anti-inclusive bugs of the old rulesets as features.

The best thing about 5e is that it is incredibly welcoming. If you played D&D "back in the old days," one of the things that was amazing about it is the way that D&D welcomed the outcasts of society. I know it's hard to believe today, but it wasn't always super-popular to nerd out, to game, to talk about dwarves and castles (oh my!).

But let's face it- when I talk about outcasts, I mean, for the most part, white, male, straight nerds. It is incredibly gratifying to see the ways in which D&D ... and more importantly, the people who play, have become so incredibly diverse over time, and especially since 5e was released!

That is something that should be celebrated. I love the old rules- but I don't love the people who use them as a reaction to the increased diversity of the playerbase of 5e.

(As always, IMO, etc.)

 

[Jack Daniel]

And older versions of D&D show this interesting double-standard where some PCs have a ton of rights, via being casters, and others have basically no rights beyond "the right to hit someone with a sword for 1d8 damage".

I have to push back on this point, at least, because however true it might be on paper, it was never true in practice. Unless for whatever reason you played campaigns where fighters and thieves never got magic items, which would clearly run against the design intent of old D&D. There's a reason that fighters and thieves can use magic swords (you know—the best magical weapons, the ones with all the coolest powers, and the commonest results on the treasure tables) while clerics and mages cannot.

Codifying player abilities via feats or proficiencies, meanwhile, absolutely does limit what players can do. If you don't have the proficiency or the feat, you can't do the thing. That's inarguable. Having a mechanic in the game that gives a PC permission to do a thing isn't transferring power from the DM to the player—it's transferring power from the DM to the rules framework.